The 25th Annual Literacies for All Summer Institute opens a conversation about the transformative potential of curriculum with learners at the heart. The conference theme, Making Meaning: Teaching and Learning Together, affirms the professional role of teachers in working closely with learners and developing learning experiences that respect the cultural backgrounds, interests and literacy development of learners. Making meaning highlights learning as making sense of our world and celebrates the many ways of making meaning including reading, writing, talking, signing, listening, viewing, thinking, constructing, designing, singing, composing, playing, imagining, dancing, drawing, painting, sculpting, gaming, and inventing. Teaching and learning together describes classrooms where learners have agency over their own learning and teachers are learning with their students. In addition, teaching and learning together may occur in homes, libraries, community centers and agencies, after school and summer programs, literacy networks, agencies and social action groups.

The Literacies for All Summer Institute is a forum in which the creative work of teachers and learners in this increasingly complex world is shared. In whole language classrooms curriculum builds from the experiences, inquiries, challenges, and problems in learners’ daily lives. Learners develop as readers and writers as they address important issues, solve problems, and explore themes that cross boundaries between subject areas.

Our theme invites proposals describing collaborations among musicians, artists, writers, and learners. We would love to see sessions that engage participants in creative expression around current themes and issues through art, music, drama, multimodal online literacies and other meaning making systems.

We invite proposals describing how learners and teachers engage in meaningful and important work together, including sessions focusing on: